April 2022 Penultimate campaign update Crystals of Power June 2020-present

 For April I’ll just do a 5e campaign update, probably the second to last one as they are rapidly approaching level 20 and the end of every major and minor plot in the game. Will do a final write-up after the campaign ends in the summer/autumn of 2022 most likely. Hopefully I’ll finish Dark Souls 1 one day soon!

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Last time I updated in October they had just defeated a huge army of demons and were level 13. Now they have just ticked over into level 16.

^Fighting the boss of the crab army in the Water Shrine. I just used an adult black dragon as a template.

While they were fighting the demon army they were made aware of the fact the so-called Dwarflake had started to grow and was now a Dwarfsea, covering miles and miles of the countryside with sterile water. Demon and human alike were drowning though thankfully it was a slow, gradual flow of water and much of the savannah here is lowly-populated at the moment.

In order to get to the bottom of this lake and figure out what was going on they needed a certain magic boat which the wizard in the nearby town had built for just this purpose. Problem was they were being held hostage now by the evil Queens’ armies in the town so they resolved to break in there and take it back.

It was quite impressive how the wizard flew about on his broomstick blasting squads of soldiers, the rogue went about stealthily trying to scout out the boat’s location and the barbarian and paladin and NPCs waited patiently outside the walls. Eventually the wait got too much and the barbarian hopped over the wall and got stuck in!

They managed to find the boat and hostage wizard in the big tavern in town which the Queen’s representative Xara had taken as her HQ. They fought their way in and managed to secure the wizard and the boat and left so it was a sort of tactical draw and retreat. There were a lot of regular soldiers but also a dozen veterans and various heavy hitters, such as an Archmage, a chief assassin and his buddies as well as Xara herself and her Shield Guardian.

Before leaving, the Second Queen, the Queen of the West, appeared before them as an Astral image and declared she would march up and slaughter them all for killing her younger sister, the Third Queen of the East, many moons ago. Fair enough. They left and made their way to the Dwarflake.

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It was a breeze crossing the Dwarfsea, they managed to dodge most of the random encounters though they did investigate the ruins of Andarr, one of the first cities hit by the Confederate-Demon armies. All seemed quiet there until they bumped into the Goristro, a living demonic siege engine. Attempts to parlay failed and they once again skilfully retreated but the wizard player managed to cast Banish successfully and sent them back to their home plane - and they were grateful!

^my plan of the map I wanted to create to show the party what was what. The dark blue in the top right corner is the original Dwarflake location. Pink square in middle with yellow flag is Moonwheat. Light blue mass is the new Dwarfsea. Green are hills and grey are the mountains.

Submerging into the underwater source of the flood, a great Dwarven underwater city, they fought a Dragon Turtle. Once again they tactically retreated but bumped into a Marid and his gang of weirdos. They fought for a brief period and then a three-way fight ensued when the Dragon Turtle got involved. The Marid and his boys fled with the boat and the Turtle made friends with the party.

^The wizard set the vegetation here on fire. Of course. And the rogue hopped on the DT back. Of course.

What followed was a journey into a gigantic Dwarven city under a lake that was filled with magical cannons that would shoot fire, acid, frost and so on at the party if they opened certain doors. They partially smartened up and used mage hand to open it and looked into rooms at angles but they frequently found ways to get shot anyway! This was a recurring source of amusement and rage.

Crabs, lobstrosities, hydras, giant crocodiles… the place was filled with various aquatic enemies. Many fights were had, some were close-run affairs. They also found loads of treasure as well, most of it water-related some not. They had found numerous ways to breathe underwater and walk on water and so on. There was a month-long hiatus here for Christmas and so on but in 2022 we got back to it. They befriended a Naiad who guided them through the city a bit.

They fought a Merreonoloth/Wastrilith/Vargouille alliance only to make so much noise a Lizard army appeared behind them and the Morkoth-Marid-Balhonnoth Trio reappeared too. The barbarian, rogue and wizard along with paladin, sorcerer and archmage NPCs managed to destroy them all.

^The Crystal of Water from the Doomstones Warhammer Fantasy first edition game.

They finally reached the end of the dungeon after 9 sessions, and a great ritual was taking place in the grand chamber led by a Water Genasi. The rogue managed to find the Crystal of Water and ended the flooding of the world. The party then proceeded to absolutely destroy the Water Genasi’s entourage but then something happened when the wizard player went from slinging spells into the chamber and misty stepped inside. The whole world went red and the Flames card of the Deck of Many Things activated. He had drawn it many sessions ago and finally a Pit Fiend emerged along with an Ice Devil. The sorcerer NPC betrayed the party as well, aligning with the devils. Despite all this they managed to defeat the various threats and win the day. The paladin player had returned for the recent sessions but decided to retire her character and gave the Crystal of Earth to the barbarian, which gave him even more HP. Fun!

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Now with 3 crystals in their possession, all crystals seemed to ‘point’ strongly toward the west, Steel Mountain, where the Fire Crystal was. It had been stolen from them in Session 33 when the gunslinger artificer shot and killed the fighter of the party in an arena match. Now at Session 57-59 they began to climb Steel Mountain and fought their way through a slew of Giants and machinery. Some sort of civil war is going on here, the Stone and Cloud Giants have split from the Hill, Fire, Frost and Storm Giants. The Stone and Cloud Giants don’t like all the new technology they were using and the alliance with the Queens so have rebelled. The players sided with them and are now carving their way up the mountain to get the Crystal of Fire.

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Ingame DAYS:	52
Ari/Mo	80002
Ephrim	211913
Erin	211913
Scorch	211913
Kills s59	1337
Current Time	08:00
Wishes cast	Sc2/2 Mo 1/2,

Scorch used his last wish to revive Ephrim the barbarian from death; Ephrim is currently vulnerable to lightning and a Storm Giant Lightning Sworded him to instant death.

Their experience points have just ticked over to level 16.

Just noticed they have an elite kill number as of session 59. Session 60 is going to be a special one...

I keep track of the days as certain things are dependent on it and its fun. For example the ring that summons berserkers will recharge on day 53 and indeed on day 52 an Acid Phoenix they control was reborn from an egg.

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Session 46	50
baba	7200
green hag	1800
sea hag	1100
lakour basics 42	2100
lakour sgts 2	2200
Session 47	30
bheur 1	2900
24 basics	1200
lakour sgts 2	2200
lak vets 2	5000
archmage 1	8400
Session 48	no kills
Session 49	1
water ele	1800
Session 50	14
water ele 3	5400
water ele myrm	2900
hydra 2	7800
archdruid	8400
giant crab 6	23400
giant lobster	7800
Session 51	4
RGBGSlaads5	13600
Session 52	13
stone defs 13	14300
Session 53	16
wastrilith	10000
merrenoloth 4	2800
vargouille 6	1200
lizard shaman 5	2250
Session 54	53
lizard shaman 1	450
lizardfolk 48	4800
mar/mor/bal 3	21600
lizard king 1	1100
Session 55	11
steam meph 7	350
water ele 3	5400
water mym 1	2900

Session 56	12
zikran	8400
water mym 1	2900
steam meph 5	250
giant shark 2	3600
kettle	11500
pit fiend	25000
ice devil	11500
Session 57	11
hill giant 6	10800
turrets 2	2000
fgd 1	11500
cannons 2	4000
Session 58	9
hill giant 7	12600
hellfire 1	15000
fire giant 1	5000
Session 59	8
hill giants 2	3600
fire giant 1	5000
frost giant 1	3900
storm giant quin	15000
parasite behir	7200
berserkers 2	900

You can see above how they transition from attacking Moonwheat garrison to assorted water themed foes and finally back to the giants on Steel Mountain. The future is full of more giants and mechs, assorted humanoids and elementals and hopefully if they make it to the end celestials.

Almost every session is violent now. We are near the end of the road, the final quarter, so it will be a series of fights with less enemies overall but way more powerful. I am very excited to see what happens. I am particularly interested in the end of the Giant saga, the resolution of the Second Queen's challenge and how they deal with the final Queen. Also there is the small matter of the Crystals of Power, the Doomstones, which may pop off in some fashion...

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Session number versus what level the party were at the time:

session #	level
1	1
2	2
3	2
4	3
5	3
6	3
7	4
8	4
9	4
10	4
11	5
12	5
13	5
14	5
15	5
16	5
17	6
18	6
19	6
20	6
21	7
22	7
23	7
24	7
25	7
26	7
27	8
28	8
29	9
30	9
31	9
32	9
33	10
34	10
35	10
36	10
37	11
38	11
39	11
40	12
41	12
42	12
43	12
44	12
45	13
46	13
47	13
48	14
49	14
50	14
51	14
52	14
53	14
54	14
55	14
56	14
57	15
58	15
59	15
60	16

Obviously I'm using experience points and a less combatative campaign might see players roleplaying for hours and go through multiple sessions at certain levels. Still interesting to see how the progression went; they remained at level 14 so long there because they were stuck in that darned Water Shrine. They still have a ton of fights coming up but they should make it to level 20 at just the right time.

^some of the final maps on Roll20. Not many left to go. It's been a blast!

I don't know how many more games are in this, I was hoping to be finished by summertime. Not that I'm in a mad rush to end it but would like a little break followed by a second campaign hopefully. 6th edition might be gracing us by 2024 or whenever so would be cool to get another long campaign in before then.

I'd love to run another tournament in the game but I think they just don't work at most levels, the various classes are too different. Maybe in the next campaign.

COVID Write-up - Very Hard Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4

 I was kind of feeling off all week since Monday-Tuesday, passed an antigen test on Wednesday but on Thursday I was coughing real bad and failed an antigen test at last so after almost 2 years to the day when Leo closed the country down I had the dreaded COVID-19. I hadn't taken too many risks in the last 2 years, I had been going to work the whole time across the city and we have to wear masks the whole time. I've seen Galway go to having no cars and few people about in 2020 to slowly back to normal by 2021 and pretty much designated traffic hellhole of Ireland by 2022. I usually didnt' wear a mask walking to work and back but it was rarely an issue though I would pass increasingly larger numbers of students mostly around the middle section of my route. If I ever got a taxi in severe rain or whatever or a bus to Dublin a handful of times I was masked. The only possibility I can think of is either my GP and haircut last Thursday or indeed me going to like 9 different pubs on Friday the 4th (almost certainly the latter).

I'm lucky in that I'm triple jabbed and am probably in the best overall shape of my life but my chest is tired from the intermittent coughing fits. Also I was hoping to get back into cycling and possibly running again, having not ran in 2 years but now I don't know. Hopefully I make a full recovery and don't have damaged lungs and brain fog and all this shite. I've just been isolating, eating as much as I can, sleeping as much as I can and was playing a lot of Civ 4 and listening to podcasts but am tiring of that a bit, must try something new. I spotted a tweet about a new Fallout mod where Easy Pete's name changes depending on what difficulty you picked and remembered I just finished playing the 3 games recently on Very Hard and meant to write my experiences up. So here goes!

Fallout 4 Very Hard Survival Mode Melee Run All DLCs

This is where I started for my sins. I had already done a Survival Mode last year and blogged about it and it was the best Fallout 4 experience I'd had yet. Survival Mode alone was great but Very Hard Survival Mode was another level. I had built a stealthy shooter last time that worked reasonably well, insofar as I spent plenty of battles about a kilometre away and looking down a scope. Exciting in its own way BUT I knew from experience the melee monster is the true beast of Fallout 4 so AND would be very difficult on both Survival Mode and Very Hard difficulty so I went for that.

It was horrifying to start out. I started with a Police Baton and upgraded to a Pipe Iron. I did my usual melee mode where I ban guns except in extreme cases like there's a turret I simply can't reach but those are so rare it doesn't apply. I had plenty of experience from the previous Survival Mode playthrough where I spent several days ingame and in real life foraging the extreme north-west of the map before daring to expand to the centre. This was no exception I slowly built up my supplies, settlements and equipment before daring to venture into Boston more centrally.

The plus side was because my combat relevant scores were so high to start out with things were a little easier than when you try to be a shooter with various scores. Strength and Endurance will get you pretty damn far. I went about 90% through the game before I ever bought the Medic perk for example. My INT was low so I could maximise gains in XP from Idiot Savant, one of the best perks in any playthrough. I could focus on one weapon perk - Big Leagues - and not have to hedge my bets like a shooter build. I knew which traits would give me the best utility going forward, besing able to craft better weapons and armour was huge. The greatest perk for a melee build - Blitz - would come online as soon as I had all the Bobbleheads necessary. That's another thing - anytime I play Fallout 4 there is so little story or anything that keeps me going so I ste my own goals, one is to get all Bobbleheads before the finish. So I usually have my build planned to accommodate that and have 1 less in every SPECIAL stat I need so when I get the relevant Bobblehead, I'll unlock the ability I really want.

The Mechanist was the hardest. I had a few failed runs at their lair. I would get as far as the Tesla cannons or some of the elite robots and die horribly. I eventually had to give up and come back later when I was more powerful. The reason I wanted to sort them first was the same as always - robot attacks on settlements and especially just roving robot raiding parties ruined everything. But it wasn't too bad. I eventually got strong enough to wipe them out myself and even survive nuclear explosions some of them did when they died.

Nuka World was tough as well as the Gauntlet at the start was a near-death experience. The worst thing was when raiders would shoot down at you. Most of the game a single lucky shot could kill you in one go, but it was never fun to watch your health meter disappear in a handful of bullets. And just the environment in general becomes horrifyingly deadly in a Very Hard Survival Mode Run. VHSM Run? But after the Gauntlet the worst thing was the same as last time - the Space World. The ghoul radiation land was also pretty terrible but some well placed anti-radiation meds stopped that from being too bad. The giant crocodile monsters in Tarzan's place weren't too bad they were just one monster at a time. Actually finishing off the DLC was grand despite the annoying back and forth from Nuka World to the Commonwealth you have to do the actual Power Plant at the end was grand and the two perks made my melee warrior unstoppable.

I always forget about the other one, Far Harbor. I hadn't done it since the first time and honestly it was just as forgettable. Suffered my first game crash here doing the radiation drinking hallucination quest but whatever. At this point I was so powerful anything it threw at me was just laughable. Not to mention it just being a forgettable episode.

The actual main quest was up next and didn't really throw anything at me I deliberately sided with the Railroad, thinking them to be the weakest faction who come into conflict with the Brotherhood and the Insitute. I don't remember doing the Institute double agent quest so that was kind of cool. Other than that they shot me a lot but I just tanked all their bullets and murdered everyone including Father in the end. I have footage of this at least.

https://youtu.be/acMvYx7MB14

So all in all a great run it just took a little while for everything to come together. I always know my time is almost up with a run when nothing hurts my character anymore, I have all the Bobbleheads and DLC completed and can one shot most enemies. It was a very satisfying run and I am starting to love how every October-November-December I get bit by the Fallout bug and play them all again and again.

Fallout New Vegas Very Hard Hardcore Mode

I tried to play 3 and it crashed instantly so I switched to New Vegas. Very Hard was a nice change I'd never done that before, just Normal or Standard. I had briefly switched to Very Hard years ago for a minute in one of the games and was annoyed at how bullets just bounced off enemies, must have been Fallout 3. I liked New Vegas as criticals were a huge factor so even at Very Hard enemies could go down to a lucky shot.

I had also downloaded a 4gb patch that stopped New vegas from crashing every few minutes, so that was great.

My Endurance was 9 and did a more completionist run as the last time I played New Vegas I did a kill everything run as a melee monster so I was a more balanced shooter character. I had END 9 so I could get all the implants. I tried to avoid fast travelling and just did every quest I possibly could. Funny thinking on it now there were a bunch I missed but that's Fallout. I encountered a few new things as well this time around too, like the Vault full of Powder Gangers I made sure to destroy them as they only appear in the end credits otherwise.

I have a 9 hour recording of me clearing Lonesome Road among other things so might try and link that here at some stage.

Other than the occasional surprise, once I had all my bits sorted and was level 49 the main storyline was not too difficult. I went with Yes Man.

Fallout 3 Very Hard Mode

I actually played this last. I found a patch that made it work on Windows 10 and it worked so well it allowed me to play Into the Pitt for the first time ever!

It started out pretty scary but unlike Fallout 4 Survival Mode, enemies are very tough but don't really seem to damage all that much more in this game on Very Hard alone. Fallout 3 has ALWAYS been a bit annoying as a bullet sponge kind of game, where you'd be shooting at a Super Mutant for a full clip and they'd still be standing no matter how good your stats were.

I did another completionist run, my only real objectives were all the named quests like Oasis and Those! etc. and all the bobbleheads. Technically I was meant to reach level 30 but got to level 29 but honestly it's fine. Same thing happened in New Vegas but got 49/50.

I also told myself to get 10 in every SPECIAL and 100 in every skill. The former not so much but got close to the latter. INT 9 ftw.

I ended up finishing Mothership Zeta in 3 hours, the Pitt in 2, Point Lookout and Broken Steel within hours of each other.

Operation Anchorage had been giving me trouble before with crashes so I was pleased when this patch stopped all that. Still a great way to get 2-3 guaranteed level ups. I tried to keep my squad alive but no joy.

Mothership Zeta was supposed to be very difficult but I just tried to play as smart as possible and avoid conflict. Reverse pickpocketing, stealth kills and just the Chinese Stealth Suit in general help a lot.

Into the Pitt was kind of cool, I was too much of a badass by the time I got there though. I imagine it would be more fun if you stumbled upon it at a low level.

By the time I was doing the Broken Steel quest line I was around level 28 or 29 and able to just tank energy weapons (to an extent!) I still had to rely on Stims and whatnot.

It was just fun to play Fallout 3 through again! I hadn't played it properly in years. I think I managed to play a quick playthrough not so long ago but was so wary of crashes I just did the main quest.

Conclusions

It was very fun to play through all three of them again back to back. It's becoming an annual thing. I wish I could get into Fallout 1 and 2, lord help me I've tried, but might have to wait for a re-release or just the right moment to strike. I also have 76 installed I'll plough through that one day too.

Anyway Very Hard difficulty is tougher obviously but not impossible. And once I got all my perks, weapons and armour online I was unstoppable in all three. Well, mostly. Which is part of the fun some enemy or effect would come along every now and then and one shot me.

Next time I'll have to think of some new way to play that is different and interesting, having played through all of them at least 5 times each I'd wager.